Because
today is the 4th of July, I thought I would share a few things about
freedom of thought.It is impossible for
a person to be truly free, unless they are in full ownership of their mind and
thoughts.A person may be physically
free, but if their mind is enslaved, then they are chained.Religion – especially fundamentalist religion
takes away that freedom

To be part of a religion, a person must subscribe to a set
of unquestionable beliefs or dogmas.Within Christianity, there is much disagreement about the exact details
of these dogmas, and as a result there are thousands of denominations, each
claiming to have the truth.Once you
have signed up to believe in a particular religion, if you start to questions
some of the dogma, and verbalize your doubts, you will soon find yourself
shunned or excommunicated.In the case of
Islam, you may be killed for rejecting the beliefs.

Right from the start, the Bible forbids the attaining of
knowledge, and condemns independent thinking.

And the Lord
God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely
die.”Genesis 2:16-17 (ESV)

The God character in the Bible places certain knowledge
off-limits to Adam and Eve, and attaches a death penalty.

But the serpent said to the woman, “You
will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it
your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and
that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and
ate…Genesis 3:4-6 (ESV)

The serpent character encourages the humans to pursue
knowledge, and to not have their thinking controlled by the threats of
God.Ironically, the story itself
indicates that the God character lied, because they did not die in the day that
they ate of it. (Yes, I know that Christians will say that Adam and Eve died 'spiritually' that day, but doing so is imposing a later belief onto the text.)

In the New Testament, Jesus promotes the idea of thought
crime.In Matthew 5, he is portrayed as
saying that lustful thoughts, and the emotion of anger are, in God’s eyes, the
same as actually committing physical acts of adultery or murder, and will be
punished in hellfire.

Proverbs 3:5 says to trust in the Lord, and not to rely on
your own understanding.In reality, what
this means is to trust in what someone else tells you that God wants – be it through
reading the words of men in the Bible, or listening to a religious leader.Don't think your yourself, but surrender your
mind to the control of another.

Not being in charge of their own minds enslaves
Christians.They have to pretend to not
like things they do like.They have to
self-censor their speech and thoughts so as not to betray to other believers,
that they are perfectly conformed to the demands of the religion.Internally they feel guilty and conflicted
for not measuring up to the religious standards.Jesus is quoted as saying that his disciples
must die daily, and indeed Christians die a little more each day, giving up who
they truly are, to be more fully enslaved by the demands of their
religion.There is much misery in
religion because of this, and it turns people into fakes, who must constantly
expend energy to maintain the illusion of perfect conformity.They are like a hamster running endlessly on
the wheel, trying to please their god.

Once I left religion, it was a progressive realization of
how enslaved I had been.Being in full
ownership of my own mind now, is a tremendous thing.It has brought so much peace into my
life.I think what I think, not what
someone else tells me to.There is no
vengeful god sifting through my thoughts.There is no forbidden knowledge.There is no front or pretense to maintain.My mind is finally my own, and I will never
surrender it to another.This is the
freedom which is foundational to all others.